A resident of Benidorm has expressed concerns that the Spanish tourism industry “might” be on the brink of collapse.
Ana, who runs the popular YouTube channel ‘Benidorm by Ana’, regularly updates her 17,000 subscribers with news and insights from the holiday hotspot.
In a recent video, she revealed that despite it being off-season, hotels in Benidorm were 90% full in September, a turnout “no one expected”. She noted that bars, restaurants and cafeterias are still “really busy”.
Ana also discussed recent Spanish news headlines predicting a potential “collapse” in tourism. She highlighted a common Spanish phrase in the articles, “die of success”, as particularly concerning.
She said: “This is a typical Spanish phrase, ‘die of success’, that [something’s] so, so, so successful that it’s not even good any longer. This might be the case. Only in August, around 11million people arrived in Spain, and up until now, up until October month, there has been around 64million tourists here in our country.”
Ana suggested that Spain’s tourism model often “prioritises quantity over quality in some places”, adding: “Spain was always tracking the number of how many tourists arrive, and a lot of places had very cheap holidays, like drinking stag/hen party holidays, people were coming in crowds but as a result it’s not as good as it seemed at first.
“Because spending is not as high and having so many people makes extra work and effort for cleaning services, for staff of the tourism industry in general. So it’s not as good as it seemed.”
Ana also commented on the anti-tourism protests that have erupted this year in various Spanish cities and resorts, where locals are frustrated over rent hikes due to properties being snapped up for tourists.
She said the protests are “slowing down”, which she attributed to the onset of a “quieter season” for Spanish tourism, and added: “All I’m going to say is that these protests did not affect tourism at all, because we’re hitting record numbers!”